Outsourcing Human Rights Obligations

A woman stands near a burning barricade holding the national flag of Nicaragua, via Wikimedia Commons user Voice of America, licensed under CC0

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Nicaragua has historically been regarded as one of the safest Central American nations. This is in part due to low levels of corruption and homicide coupled with the fact that unrest and violence in Nicaragua is not as pervasive as it is in other Central American countries. As a result, Nicaragua has had low migration to the United States. Of the migrants that do leave Nicaragua, most of them are seeking better paying jobs in neighboring Costa Rica. However, this overall peace within Nicaragua ceased under President Daniel Ortega.

President Ortega has attempted to extract himself from responsibility by labeling the para-military groups as foreign agitators, gangs, and citizens defending themselves. Even if that were true, Ortega would still have the responsibility to protect his citizens from being killed on the streets for exercising their right to protest. According to Article 1 of the ACHR, states are required to not only refrain from violating the provisions, but also to ensure that their citizens can exercise their rights under the ACHR. Moreover, Article 2 of the ICCPR, which Nicaragua is a party to, also requires states to respect and protect rights and remedy violations.

At this point—with such widespread killing of his citizens—Ortega cannot simply disavow the human rights violations as the actions of foreign agitators. Nicaragua’s human rights obligations are universal; they do not depend solely on acts of commission, as human rights violations can also be based on acts of omission such as failing to protect citizens from widespread killings. According to Article 1 of the ACHR, the government has the responsibility to ensure that the enumerated rights and freedoms are protected. By ignoring violations of rights and freedoms, the head of the state is effectively condoning those violations, eliminating the protections of the ACHR.

Nicaragua signed and ratified the ACHR in 2006, consenting to all of its authority, including the competence of Article 45. Article 45 provides that the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights can “examine communications in which a State Party alleges another State Party has committed a violation of a human right set forth in this Convention.” Because of this jurisdiction, a state party may bring a complaint to the Commission or the Court against Nicaragua for not respecting human rights. If the Nicaraguan government refuses to respect the rights of its citizens, it is up to the international community to utilize the human rights bodies to hold Ortega and the para-police accountable for the fundamental human rights violations.